When you personally are self-sufficient. have patience, and know where to find answers and it seems easy to do that, it's pretty easy to be frustrated with someone asking a question that's already answered in lots of places. As someone who has worked hard writing prose aimed at helping users, I frustrate easily with people who either fail to use help resources when they run into a problem or ask really dumb questions.
E-mail has none of the visual clues we often depend upon in our face-to-face communiation. Students, who are often frustrated with this technology, will spit out a quick E-mail asking a question like "I'm having trouble. Can you help me?" Not having a clue or a scintilla of evidence, other than the question, what kind of help they need, I respond with the quick, terse retort, "Yes." I chuckle to myself when I think about the student opening the E-mail and finding the simple, "Yes" reply. It's either "Oh, good. He can help me." and / or "Well, why doesn't he help me?" Either way, the student is even mroe frustrated and I'm left wondering when the message will sink in.
Until I figure out how to create perfect documentation and produce ideal users, I'd like to suggest some ways to ask questions that are likely to get friendly, hopefully useful, answers. The examples are taken directly from the studens' E-mail. The alternativs are designed to get answers and not responses like, "RTFO."
vs.
Better - I want to do X. Could you point me to some documentation that will help me?
vs.
Better - I followed these instructions to step 3. Then I got a dialog box that said <error message>. I pressed OK, and here's my screwed-up file. Where can I go from here?
or
Poor - Using Word, I tried to print from Workstation 3 to Printer Z. My paper never arrived at the printer. No, I didn't read the documentation--I'm not very good at reading documentation--I'd rather have someone just tell me what to do.
or
vs.
Better - I didn't understand this paragraph ( and quotes the paragraph) in the documentation. I seem to be hung up on what exactly needs to be done. Would you please clarify?
vs.
Better - I must have forgotten my password, because I can't log in with it--could I have a new one?
This last set is interesting because while neither is hostile and both make clear what's wrong, I have little measures I use to decide whether I think someone's an idiot or not. One way to be thought an idiot is to accuse the machine of doing something to you that it can't do, like arbitrarily refusing your password. So instead, you take the responsibility: "I forgot"--which, after all, is by far the most likely explanation or you blame the machine. Blaming the machine makes you look foolish.
The idea, of course, is to get around to the idea that a polite question that gives as much information as possible and indicates that you did try or want to try to do your own work, but you need a clue, gets a friendly response from any reasonable person, while "please do my work for me" or "please repeat for me what is in the documentation or course outline you provided" or "your documentation sucks" get unfavorable responses.
When students figure out that the whole point is that I want you to do your own work, be reasonably self-sufficient, take advantage of the resources I've prepared, and ask politely when you need help, I'll bend over backwards. When the student starts asking questions in ways that don't make them look like idiots; when they demonstrate that they've given the problem some thought and when they can provide a detailed explanation of where they are in the process, I'll be there.